Planet Redemption: Episode One - 8. The Research Station

The research station was anchored into the side of a massive mountain, pipes latching onto the rock like the appendages of a parasite digging into its host. Made of steel and glass, the design was very impressive in Danni's opinion; especially since it had been built by the equivalent of backyard hicks. Of course he wouldn't have said this to Duke for fear of hurting his feelings.

Danni counted four rows of windows. He could only assume that there were four floors. Still, the research station was massive. He wondered how many scientists worked inside. Surely they were all imprisoned on this planet like everyone else. Another thought that came to mind was where in the world they got their education; the information they had would probably be outdated from what was available on Earth. Questions, so many questions.

But that wasn't all. There was something else. It was so quiet, too quiet. The windows were dark so it was impossible to see inside. Yet he got the feeling that Duke and he were being watched. Danni didn't like that one bit. He didn't like the idea of someone being able to see him, but not the other way around.

"Hey, you wanna grab your stuff?" Duke asked. "Do you want to go in there unprepared?"

"I don't like this," Danni said.

"What's there to like?"

"Don't fuck with me, Duke."

The seriousness in Danni's voice made Duke look up. The sheriff's face softened. He put a hand on Danni's shoulder. "Look, we'll make this quick okay. We'll take a peek inside, see what we can do to help, and head back to the colony, okay?"

"Whatever." Danni grabbed a gun, checked to make sure that it was loaded, and put it in the holster attached to his belt, along with several clips of ammo. "Did you ever stop to think that this is another set-up?"

"What do you mean?"

Danni rolled his eyes. "Diana. That's what I mean."

Duke chuckled. "Why would this be a set-up?"

"Are you really that stupid?" Danni snapped. "You know damn well what she's like."

The moment the words came out of his mouth Danni knew that he had said the wrong thing. He felt it before he saw it, the spike of anger that rose up in Duke. Duke got in his face, towering over him, glowering down at him. When he spoke it was through gritted teeth. "Don't think that just because I like fucking you it doesn't mean I won’t knock you flat on your ass."

Danni stepped back reflexively and then stepped back forward, standing his ground. He glared back up at Duke. "You want to knock me on my ass, fine. But wake up. I get that you've known her your whole life and that you respect her, but you know what she's capable of. Don't think for a second that she won't throw you under the bus to get whatever it is she wants. You can't trust her. You can't trust anybody."

"I trust you," Duke said, shoulders relaxing.

"Don't," Danni said gently.

"Why not?"

"Because on this planet power and survival are the only currencies that matter. Power is the key to survival."

Duke blinked. "Who told you that?"

"Your warden. C'mon, let's get this over with."

Duke grabbed Danni by the back of his jacket with one hand and pulled him back. "No way, shrimp. Me first."

With Duke leading the way, they marched towards the research station. Danni let his senses stretch out, trying to see if he could sense anything with his mind but there was nothing except for the persistent sense that something was very wrong. At all times he kept his hand on his gun. He didn't want to take any chances. Planet Redemption had taught him well on what could happen when you took risks.

The only entrance in sight was a pair of metal blast doors at the bottom of the station. There was a black digipad fastened to the wall. Duke ran his hand over it and the digipad blinked on, glowing green. A yellow light indicated for him to press his thumb to it. Immediately the digipad flashed red.

"What the fuck?" Duke growled. "How the hell are we supposed to get in?"

Danni tapped him quickly on the shoulder, pressed a finger to his lip, and pointed up at something above them; he had his gun out and was in a defensive stance. Duke looked up in the direction where Danni had pointed to the round video camera that was watching them. In the center of the lense he could see a little red dot. Like that's not fucking creepy, Duke thought, a chill going up his spine.

"Hey," he said, waving stupidly at the camera. "You sent an S.O.S a couple of days ago. We're from Colony 12. We're here to help."

The lense widened in what seemed like recognition and the digipad flashed green. The blast doors opened revealing a lift inside. Danni and Duke exchanged looks and stepped inside. Just before the blast doors closed LED lights blinked on. Another set of blast doors opened behind them. Danni and Duke turned around and came face to face with a man dressed in a white lab coat. He was rangy with blonde hair that was grey at the roots, a long, hookish nose and grey eyes that were magnified by the thick-lensed glasses he wore. The name on the tag pinned to the lapel of his lab coat read VECTOR. Looking at him made Danni think of Alexander. He suddenly felt very homesick.

“Are you the one that sent the S.O.S call?” Duke asked.

“Yes,” Vector said hastily. “You must come quickly! They are coming!”

Duke frowned, looking around. “Who is?”

Just then something crashed through the ceiling of the elevator car. Danni had just enough time to jump out of the way. The thing that had crashed through the ceiling was a man. He staggered drunkenly to his feet and looked at Danni with eyes as black as night. Like Vector, he was dressed in a white lab coat that was splattered with a mixture of blood and a strange black fluid.

Duke pointed his gun at him. “Hey, buddy, stay back.”

The man let out a deafening shriek and charged at Danni, hands outstretched like claws. Before Danni could fire, the man’s hands closed around his throat and slammed him up against a wall. The force of the impact knocked the gun from his hand. Black drool spilled freely from the man’s mouth. Sensing that his life was being threatened, Danni’s mind and body immediately went into defense mode. He lashed out, his knee sinking into the man’s crotch.

A blow to the groin like that would have driven any man to his knees but whoever, no whatever this man had become, he didn’t even seem to feel it. Duke dived into the conflict. He wrapped his arms around the man’s waist and pulled him off Danni. The man clawed and kicked at the air, making screeching sounds that made Danni think of a bird. With a curse Duke flung the man to the floor. As soon as the man hit the floor, he staggered to his feet and charged again, this time at Duke.

Danni grabbed his gun and fired at the man three times. The shots did nothing to stop him; in fact they only seemed to irritate him. Instead of blood, more blacked fluid oozed out of the man’s wounds. Danni aimed at the man’s head and fired once more. The bullet hit the man directly in between the eyes. More of the strange black gunk burst out of the wound in his forehead. He collapsed to the floor, twitched for a few seconds, and then became very still.

Danni was overwhelmed by the deafening drum beat of his own heart, the rush of his blood. His mind spun. The moment the man’s flesh had touched his own he had seen into the man’s head and what he had seen frightened him like nothing ever had before. Not even when Mike Mize had raped him and left him to die. Because there had been nothing; no thought, no emotion. Nothing. But even more disturbing than that was the black shit that was spreading around the dead man in a puddle. What the fuck was it? Danni checked to make sure that he didn’t have any of the crap on him and was glad to see that he didn’t.

Duke came over to him. “Are you okay?”

Danni nodded shakily “You?”

“I’m fine.” Duke rounded on Vector. “What the fuck was that?”

The scientist licked his lip nervously. “I’ll explain in a second but right now there’s no time. There’s more of them coming.”

As if to confirm this, three more of the scientists crashed through the hole in the ceiling.

“Fuck me,” Duke said. “I can’t deal with three more of those things.”

Danni and he ran after Vector. Vector led them through another set of blast doors. As soon as the three of them were through, he slid what appeared to be a pass card into a console on the wall. The blast doors slammed shut and not a second later the three scientists slammed into it.

“Can they get through that?” Danni asked Vector.

“Not a chance,” the scientist said, running his hand through his hair. “Those doors weigh two tons each; that’s three feet of titanium steel that they’re trying to burst their way through. Not going to happen, thank God. Follow me again, please. I want to go somewhere a little more quiet. I can’t think with them making all that racket.”

Danni and Duke followed Vector into a laboratory. The lab had the same smell of antiseptic and polished chrome that Danni was so accustomed to; it made him sick to his stomach. In the center of the room was a metal chair anchored into the floor. On the arms of the chair were two steel cuffs. There were two more cuffs at the foot of the chair. On the arms of the chair were two splashes of what Danni was starting to think as the Fucking Black Shit. The Fucking Black Shit looked fresh. A chill of unease went up his spine. He didn’t like this place. To their right there was another steel door that led to a cold pantry. He counted three surveillance cameras mounted inside of the laboratory.

The next room that Vector took them into was an observation room. There was a large window that looked into the laboratory. The three computer monitors in the observation room were blank. Vector dumped himself in one of the three computer chairs and waved impatiently for Danni and Duke to sit down in the other two.

“I didn’t think anyone would come, let alone get the radio transmission I sent out,” Vector said. “Not on this dead planet. I’ve been isolated in this place for a week. That’s not including the last three years I’ve spent living in the place.”

“What were those things?” Danni said. “They weren’t human.”

“No,” Vector said. “They aren’t. They used to be. Some of them used to be colleagues of mine, people that I knew and even loved. Now out of the two hundred scientists that lived here every day I am the only one that’s still human.”

“You have some explaining to do,” Duke rumbled, jabbing a meaty finger in Vector’s direction.

“Yes, I know that,” Vector snapped as he started to wipe his glasses with the hem of his jacket. “I’m trying to figure out the best way to do that. I haven’t slept in days, so excuse me while I try to gather my thoughts.”

Danni glanced anxiously at the cameras. “Are you absolutely sure they can’t get in?”

“I already answered that question. If they could get in I would have been dead a long time ago. Either that or I’d be just like them.” Vector slid his glasses back on and cleared his throat. “I am a third generation colonist. My grandfather was an arsonist. He liked to watch things burn. People too. He also had an appreciation for science. He helped build this research station but he died before it was fully complete. My father witnessed it being finished three years ago. I’m telling you both this so that you can have a general idea of the timeline. This research station is not very old, not like the Redemption Bridges.

Vector cleared his throat again. “When Aethyx scouted this planet out they claimed that there were no other signs of life. Claimed. Maybe they were telling the truth, maybe not. I don’t know and I don’t care. Yet the planet is habitable to a degree. The air is breathable, it isn’t toxic. And we found something.”

“What are you talking about?” Duke growled impatiently.

“He’s saying that the scientists working here found the existence of alien life,” Danni said.

Vector nodded. “Correct.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Duke said.

“He’s not,” Danni said.

“You believe this shit?” Duke scoffed.

“It just so happens that I do,” Danni answered. He sounded slightly defensive.

“This station isn’t just built onto the side of the mountain,” Vector continued. “Most of it has been built into the mountain for geological purposes. The station is eight stories. We are technically on story one. There are four stories above us. Those are the living quarters. Below us are four more stories. We always called them the Negative Four because they go underground. Those contain all the laboratories and offices. The very last floor is where the power grid is located. It’s also the entrance into the mines. That is where we found the tombs.”

Danni blinked. “Tombs? "You mean they're dead?"

Vector nodded sadly. "Afraid so. But that doesn't make what we found any less fascinating. Just beneath our feet, buried under the ice is a beautiful temple built by alien hands. I've seen it with my own eyes. The design is amazing. It almost looks Mayan in nature."

Danni thought of the dream he'd had. Could it be that he had dreamed of the very temple that Vector was talking about?

"Up until now we've been working obsessively, trying to unravel as much of the mysteries as we can. Before things turned south we were able to start translating their language. Like the Egyptians they wrote in hieroglyphs, recording their history. We were only able to translate bits and pieces, just enough to assemble an idea of what happened to them."

"Go on," Danni said, fascinated.

"I can't believe you're letting him spoon feed you this bullshit," Duke grumbled.

Danni ignored him, silently urging the scientist to go on.

"We know that they're colonists just like our ancestors were," Vector continued. "Which is what we chose to name them. The Colonists. We don't actually know what they called themselves. This is not their home planet. We don't know anything about their actual home planet or their reasoning for choosing to colonize this planet."

"The planet wasn't always like this, was it?" Danni asked. He was growing more and more excited. "It wasn't always just snow and ice. There used to be trees and animals, right?"

Vector frowned. "Yes, it's all depicted in their hieroglyphs. How did you know that?"

"I dreamt it," Danni said. "What killed the...what did you call them, the Colonists?"

"The very thing that has turned my colleagues into monsters. It's some sort of virus or plague. One of my colleagues, Martin, found a dagger when we were underground. It had a strange black growth on it, much like the stuff you saw coming out of their mouths. We always left everything we found down there just to be safe but unbeknownst to us he broke protocol by bringing it up with him." Vector's eyes had grown distant. He was no longer talking to Danni and Duke but to himself, as if trying to create an explanation for how this nightmare had started. "He must have cut himself at some point, perhaps while pulling the knife out, and the fungi or whatever was got into the cut, got into his bloodstream. And then he bit Loomis and so on it went. It's also the thing that eradicated all life on the planet, altering its topography, eradicating the plants and forest life..." He stopped and looked at Duke. "You don't believe me, of course. Your young friend here does, but you don't."

Duke stubbornly crossed his arms over his chest. "You haven't shown us anything that would convince me you're telling the truth."

Vector's face turned beet red, his eyes filling with tears. Danni could tell that he was getting ready to cry out of frustration, maybe grief, or a mixture of things, and felt sorry for him. "Have you not been paying attention?" The scientist's voice teetered on the edge of breaking. "You shot that man three times. Three times. Three shots to the chest would have been enough to put any man down. Did it put him down? No, not until you shot him in the head. That's the only way you can kill them, by shooting them in the head."

"Like zombies?" Danni said.

Vector ignored him; he only had eyes for Duke. Danni could feel the frustration turn into anger. It was coming off the scientists in waves. Just when it seemed like Vector would exploded, it all deflated out of him like helium, leaving behind hopelessness and exhaustion. "I don't care if you believe me or not. Not really. I wish we never found those goddamned ruins. If we hadn't, then none of this would have happened."

"It doesn't matter whether or not I believe you," Duke said. His voice was surprisingly gentle. "The whole time we've been talking about all this alien business precious seconds have been ticking by in which we could have been coming up with a plan for getting out of here."

Vector gave him a shaky nod. Though he looked older than Duke in appearance, his body language made him look like a frightened child. His shoulders and back were hunched. His glasses sat on the crook of his long, beaky nose. With a long, thin finger he pushed them back up. He let out a sigh and raised his head. "We can't leave. Not yet. We have to kill all of them, whatever they are."

"Why?" Duke said.

Vector opened his mouth to answer but Danni beat him to it. "Because if just one of them were to get out and get to one of the twelve colonies then more people could become infected. It would create an epidemic. Considering the level of technology and medical knowledge we have it could wipe us out in no time."

"Fuck," Duke said. "If what you say is true then we can't take a chance and say no - can we. Which begs the question - how do we do that. There's no way Danni and I have enough ammo to take out every last one of those things."

Vector swivelled around in his chair and pointed at a large map pinned to the wall in front of him. He pointed at a small square at the bottom corridor and tapped at it. "See this? This is the fusion reactor. It's what powers everything. It's on floor Negative Four. All we have to do is blow it up. There's just one problem. I don't have the passcard needed to blow it up. I'm not head scientist. Dr. Trelawny has it, but he's infected. He should be on one of the lower levels."

"Okay," Duke said slowly. "I guess we’ll just have to take it from him. Is that all?"

"No. Once I use the passcard and the reactor starts to overheat I can't reverse it. There's a ten minute countdown to get a minimum safe distance from the blast radius. I don't know how far that radius is. And I'm willing to bet that the lift doesn't work anymore, which means that we'd have to scramble out of here on foot."

"You said there was only one problem" Danni said. "That was more like four or five. I don't like it."

Vector shrugged apologetically. "I don't like it either, but it's the only thing that I know of to do. The blast should be strong enough to kill them all. It has to be done."

Duke stood up. "Okay, folks. Enough chit chat, let's just get this shit over with. You wouldn't happen to have an extra gun would you, Vec?"

In response, Vector lifted the hem of his coat and showed them the .9 mm holstered to his side. It was the exact same model that Danni and Duke had. The trio went back into the laboratory. Vector pulled out his pass card, glancing at Danni and Duke. He held his gun in the other hand.

"Ready?" he asked.

Danni and Duke nodded silently. Duke had enough time to swallow fearfully before the scientist scanned his card and the doors slid open.

The moment they left the safety of the lab Danni expected one of Vector's crazed scientist to charge at them,but nothing happened. He let his psychic senses stretch out, probing the room. "They're gone," he whispered.

"Where did they go?" Duke hissed back.

"They don't like to stay in one place for long," Vector explained. "They use the vents to travel in between the eight levels. They're like rats, they like to scavenge. There's a door that leads to the stairs on the right side of the room. Let's hurry."

Sure enough, just as Vector had said, there was a door with a black sign next to it that said STAIRS in white capital letters. An arrow below that indicated that they were going down. Duke waved for Danni to stand back so that he could take the lead. He shouldered the door open and peeked around the corner, gun at the ready. He signalled that it was clear by giving them a thumbs up.

Though Danni was doing his best to be as quiet as possible, his footfalls seemed to echo all around them. He told himself that it was just the adrenaline pumping through his body, the fear, that made it seem that way. He was afraid that the very beating of his own heart would give their position away to those things, whatever they were. And what should they be called? Not that it really mattered that much, but he had to have something to call them. He decided it was simple to name them after the scientist.

"Vectors," he whispered, as they reached the first landing.

Vector turned his head in Danni's direction, eyebrow raised.

Danni grinned. "I'm naming them after you. Vectors."

Duke raised a finger to his lips. They continued to descend deeper underground.

It was as they reached Floor Negative Two that Danni's psychic senses picked up danger; it was like a mental alarm going off in his head. He looked up just as one of the vectors launched itself over the railing. He stepped out of the way as it hit the ground with a loud thud. He knew that such an impact would have killed any human being, but the very thing that made the Fucking Black Shit made them harder to kill.

Before the vector could fully rise to its feet, Danni lashed out with a well-aimed kick. The kick threw the vector back against the steps. It grunted, already in the process of getting back to its feet. Danni put a bullet in its head, Fucking Black Shit splattering all over the stairs. Already two more vectors were coming down the steps. Another one dropped from the ceiling. From the thud of footsteps there were more coming. One of them slipped in the puddle of Fucking Black Shit and fell on its ass. Danni fired three times, each shot hitting a Vector in the head.

"Go!" he shouted at the others. "I'm staying."

"No way," Duke said, skidding to a halt. "You're coming too."

"There's no arguing," Danni said. "More of the vectors are coming. I'm going to give you some time. Find Trelawny, get the passcard and set the reactor to go off. I'll be fine. I'll catch up." He turned and fired at three more Vectors.

Duke cursed and shoved Vector forward. "Lead the way. And hurry."

Danni's mind had become a targeting system, track the vectors. One vector, two vector, three vector, four, he thought. Where his eyes went the gun followed, and where the gun went the bullet hit. In the back of his mind he thanked Alexander Aamodt for all the "mistakes" that he'd instilled in Danni. It was those mistakes that was going to come in handy.

He spun around and lashed out with a roundhouse kick that connected with the back of a vector's head and it rolled down onto the floor. He pinned its head down with his foot and put a bullet into the side of its temple, aimed in front of him, and fired twice more. One had gotten past him and was racing down the stairs. He launched himself over the railing and landed on top of it. Its skull cracked as he landed on top of its head with both feet.

In the back of his mind he thought of Duke and Vector. Each monster he killed was one less they had to deal with.

With each crack of gunfire he heard, it was becoming harder and harder for Duke to keep his focus on what was happening before him and what not be happening behind him. What if he gets hurt? Duke thought. What will I do? He forced himself not to think about it. He didn't know if he could think about it. Ever since the Revelation 5S77 had brought Danni, frozen in his CryoSleep chamber, Planet Redemption had become a warmer place. Duke didn't know if he would be able to survive having that warmth taken away from him.

"We're almost there," Vector said. "Last bit of stairs before we get to the reactor."

"Good," Duke huffed; there was a stitch growing in his side and it hurt like a motherfucker. "I don't know how much longer I can keep this up."

Finally they reached a door with a sign that read CAUTION: REACTOR. They hurried inside.

The fusion reactor was massive. It stood fifty feet high and was built into the ceiling. Wires and cables as thick as Duke's waist fed into the ceiling. Behind it was a bank of computers; to its left was the door to another lift.

“What’s that over there?” Duke asked. He pointed to the doors of the lift.

“That leads down to the ruins-” Vector didn’t get a chance to finish his sentence. A man in a white lab coat latched itself onto Vector’s back, knocking the gun from his hand. Vector screamed and spun about, trying to throw the man off of him. Duke raised his gun just as the man ripped Vector’s throat out with his teeth. Blood sprayed all over the man’s face. Vector sank to his knees, more blood coming out of his mouth. Duke had never seen so much blood at once, never…

Another shot rang out from somewhere, hitting the man in the forehead. He fell onto the cement, bleeding black.

To Duke’s surprise Danni ran past him and knelt down by Vector’s side. He pressed his fingers to the gaping hole in the scientist’s throat trying to staunch the bleeding. The wound was so severe that blood continued to seep through his fingers. The scientist was twitching, trying to speak. He pointed at the corpse lying just inches away. “Trelawny,” he managed to sputter. “G-Get his key.”

Danni crawled over to the corpse and rooted around in the pockets. Within seconds he fished out a green passcard. He crawled back to the dying scientist. “What do I do?”

“Go to the computer over there,” the scientist gasped. His face had turned deathly pale. Danni could feel the life ebbing out of him with each passing second. “Scan the passcard. A list of options will come up. You want number 9 which will say fail safe. That is the one that will blow up the reactor.” Danni moved to stand up but the scientist grabbed him with a surprisingly strong grip. “Leave my body here. I don’t want to turn into one of those things.”

Danni could only nod. His eyes were blurred with tears. He didn’t understand why he felt sad over this man, they had just met a few hours ago. Perhaps you were supposed to feel sad over all dying things. He rose to his feet and glanced over at Duke. Duke was just standing there, staring at the two corpses on the floor. Danni realized that he was in shock.

Danni went over to the computer console and scanned Trelawny’s card. Just as Vector said it would, a list of options came up. Towards the bottom was the command FAIL SAFE. Without hesitating he hit the 9 key. Almost immediately red lights flashed and a computerized female voice said: “EMERGENCY ALERT! EMERGENCY ALERT! THIS IS NOT A DRILL! ALL PERSONNEL YOU HAVE TEN MINUTES TO EVACUATE!” Behind him Danni could hear the reactor make a whirring sound as the temperature within started to rise. Already smoke was curling out of the vents.

“Come on,” he said, taking Duke’s hand. “It’s time to go.”

“Good,” Duke said. “I can’t wait to watch this place blow sky high.”

They made it to the snowmobile; all thoughts on getting as far away from the station as possible. Danni threw Trelawny’s passkey into the snow and climbed into the driver’s seat, shouting after Duke. “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”

Duke looked as if he was on the verge of collapsing. “I need to catch my...breath.”

“You can’t catch your breath when you’re dead. Get your fucking ass into the snowmobile. Now Duke!”

Duke’s knees almost gave out as he climbed into the snowmobile. He’d barely sat down when Danni hit the gas and they went shooting forward. “Where the hell did you learn to drive?” he huffed.

“Good question,” Danni said, keeping his eyes on the rearview mirror. “I don’t know. I just do. I’m my father’s failed science project, remember?”

“Don’t worry, we’re going to be o-”

Before Duke could finish saying, We’re going to be okay, the reactor inside of the research station exploded. They felt it in the ground underneath them about a second before they saw it; the ground shook underneath them, making the snowmobile bounce into the air before touching the ground again with such force that Duke’s face slammed into the dashboard, splitting his lip. Then the research station and the mountain it was latched onto went up in a cloud of flames. The sight was so glorious that Duke forgot about the pain he was in. He had never seen anything like it.

The aftershock of the blast hit the snowmobile, almost making it flip end over end. Somehow it bounced back down again and kept going forward. Danni kept his foot on the gas pedal, eyes focused intently on the ground ahead. He glanced once more through the windshield and said, “You gotta be fucking kidding me?”

Had Duke not sensed that the danger was not yet over he would have found Danni’s use of the expression funny. Instead he sat up and turned to look out the back window. The research station, the mountain, all of it was sinking below the ice. The ground was literally starting to sink down and the sinkhole was coming towards them. “Go, go, go, fucking go!” he roared.

“I’m going as fast as this piece of shit will let me!” Danni screamed back.

Duke closed his eyes. He couldn’t bear to keep them open and witness what might happen next. Would they feel the ground give way causing them to plummet into the lower depths of the planet? He prayed to the Good Lord, hoping that the Heavenly Father had enough grace for him despite all of the terrible things he’d done in his life.

Then they stopped moving.

Duke opened his eyes and looked over at Danni. He cheered, so overjoyed to be alive. He grabbed Danni’s face in both his hands and kissed him on the lips hard. Danni didn’t push him back so Duke took that has a good sign.

“We’re alive,” he said when they parted. “You did it Danni.”

Danni didn’t respond. There was a strange expression on his face, like something was bothering him. He climbed out of the snowmobile with Duke following close behind. When he saw how close they’d been to death the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

Just two feet away the ground dropped sharply into oblivion. The hole that had been punched into the planet by the blast was several kilometers wide and much deeper. Danni went back to the snowmobile and started rummaging around in one of the duffle bags. When he came back he had a flare gun in his hand.

“What are you doing?” Duke said.

“Just hang on a second,” Danni said patiently. He took a few steps away from Duke and fired the flare gun. The flare exploded in a glowing circle of red light that slowly plummeted from the sky. It lit the crater just enough that they could see the bottom of it.

“He wasn’t lying,” Duke gasped. “By God, I was wrong. Vector really wasn’t lying.”

Below was a whole city built by alien hands. Buildings of different shapes and sizes, built out of stone, preserved beneath the ice. And in the center of it all was the temple that looked like a Mayan pyramid. The same one that had appeared in Danni’s dreams.